


Last Dance

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-16
Updated: 2006-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by anonymous</p><p>"I have never known the man that you are now. Perhaps this is the man you were always meant to be. It is good to see you finally, Beloved."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for esrafil

 

 

The Fool's kiss burned through me, the memories I had given to Girl on a Dragon leaping from his mouth to mine, my forgotten experiences and feelings, his love and my pain all crowding their way into a space that had grown much too small to enclose them.

I couldn't hold it, I wasn't strong enough...

The tension that had suffused the Fool's body flowed away as he released me and I bent, gasping, my head down between my legs to try and halt the rush of nausea. Even as I crouched there in the damp moss, I was vaguely aware that he dropped to his knees beside me, his free hand fluttering over me in light, sweeping touches.

Then the world spun and I was lost.

When I came to myself, my lip was still bleeding freely where I'd bitten at it, clinging to the sharp pain, desperate for something real in that whirling flood of emotion. The memories of Molly, of Burrich, of my mother. Even now, they swirled through my head and I could no more control what I would remember next than I could have stopped the tide. There was so much I had forgotten — no, that was the wrong word — so much I have given freely, had _demanded_ that Girl on a Dragon take from me. Her need had only forced more from me, more that I had freely given until Nighteyes had intervened.

Even that thought, one I had kept with me and clung to, made me realise that I had even given away some of my time with Nighteyes, when my wolf and I had run together as one. The real Changer had been pushed away as much as the real FitzChivalry, the man who laughed and cried and hunted and hurt and was Pack.

How had my wolf reconciled himself to the half-man he was bonded to?

I wept now for Nighteyes, for his sacrifice, tears falling silently down my chin to mingle with the blood there. The Fool did not comment, only led me to the stream to wash my face.

It was only later than night, as I stared into the glowing embers of the fire and began slowly putting together the missing pieces of my life, that I realised I regained some of my memories of the Fool. He was awake beside me, I knew, but I did not speak to him as I turned over these new memories. I did not ask myself why I had forsaken these small moments, a touch of his hand upon mine, the moment he first spoke to me as an equal, the moment I first realised that he was more than a pale tumbler clasping his Rat sceptre. I had not noticed that they were missing until now.

I wondered what else I would remember, what would come back to me, the small details hidden within the onslaught. The things that had hurt so much then were different from the pain of the man I now was, and the years of absence made some of my youthful hopes and fears seem less important and all-consuming as they had then.

It was some days before I realised that I had gained something more.

* * *

I did not admit to it, even at first. Before then, we travelled back though the Skill-pillar into the icy tunnels beneath Aslevjal. The Fool's meeting with the Black Man was interesting, but I was caught up with the news from Chade and Dutiful, and I did not notice or have time to think of such things.

Looking back, I can see that that as I regained my memories, I stepped forward to embrace the real world. The Fool, on the other hand, was stepping away from humanity, his task complete. But I did not see it then. I only knew such profound happiness as I had only known a very few times in my life, happiness that I had only previously felt when I was encircled in the arms of women; Molly, and my mother.

I threw myself back into my life. As the Fool healed under the care of Prilkop, Thick and I travelled to the Six Duchies and leapt headlong into the intrigue that gathered there.

But in the time that I was at Buckkeep, I dreamed.

I dreamed of a boy, a puppy bounding at his heels as they ran though the corridor of the Keep. That same boy, stealing food from the tabletop in the Hall. I dreamed of a tall young man with an angular face, looking at me with amused tolerance and then annoyance as I tangled my words, the rhymes refusing to leap off my tongue and inspire him as I had intended. I dreamed of a shadowed face racked with pain, a wolf curled around him on a dark road in the mountains. My dreams were full of my feeling for this boy, this man, and I clutched the dreams to me as I slept, and woke refreshed.

In the cold light of day I had no time to examine the dreams, my Queen needed me. And when Kettricken and Chade had finished with me, I sought my bed incapable of coherent thought.

Until the day that I fled though the Witness Stone. The Bastard King running away.

I had hefted Chivalry's sword in Chade's tower room and I had seen myself in the glass, and I had recognised the man in the dream, and from that, the boy as well.

It was different from the face I had seen staring back at me when I had inhabited the Fool's body. Then I had been haggard, unshaven, and had carried my friend's body many miles under the ice. Now, clean and clad in Buck blue, this was the man from my dream and yet it was not. I sank to my chair and probed my mind. I _remembered_ the boy and his puppy — Nosy, part of my mind supplied — but until this point there had not been that connection, that name in the memory. I pulled out my own recollection of the scene and compared the two: Nosy and I under the table, faced with King Shrewd and Prince Regal, with Fool in his motley capering behind them.

Then I closed my eyes and searched through the other dreams, finding memories of myself that I could not possibly have seen, from vantage points that I had never visited. My head ached as I experienced this strange doubling of my mind, playing out scenes from two different points of view, times in which I had not always been aware that some was watching me. The overriding sense of these memories was one of love, and the strength of the emotion startled me. I had known the Fool loved me, as I loved him, but the depth of his regard was more than I had known. In each, he saw me not as I saw myself at that moment, but instead had given me a strength, a purpose that I had not given myself. He believed these things about me as he believed that the grass was green. As he believed in dragons. With all his heart.

Did he mean to give these memories to me? I knew his love for me, but feeling it was a different thing. It was like a shift in my mind, suddenly seeing myself the way that he saw me.

As I thought of this, I sat straighter in my chair. These things were true, I realised. The Fool saw me as a King. He saw me as the saviour of the world. But most importantly, the Fool loved me, and looking at myself though his eyes, I could see the person he loved.

That was when I fled Buckkeep and returned to Aslevjal.

* * *

My meeting with the Fool did not go as planned. His greeting lacked enthusiasm, even as my heart leapt in my chest to see him. Obviously he had hardened himself against this moment, and it seemed that his mind was already made up. His words of leaving frightened me. My hurt when his silvered fingers at my wrist severed the bond between us was more than I could say. But his reasons and arguments made sense to me, and although I did not like it, I agreed that if this was what he wanted, I would abide by his wishes. I did not know if he saw how it was breaking me. So I did not argue, not even when he released my hand and stepped away from me. Because I _knew_ what he felt for me, it lived inside me, and that feeling could not accept that a parting between us would be forever.

The Fool half turned away from me, and then slowly, almost reluctantly, turned back. "You are different now." He paused, stared at me some more, eyes wide. "You no longer hate yourself."

I jumped at that, wondering that he had seen me so clearly. He shook his head sadly. "You did, you know. I'm not the only one that has seen this in you, and not the only one who has spoken to you of it. But speaking of a thing does not always cure it, and when speaking did not bring change, you were left to grow as you saw fit. But this was not something that has come back to you from Girl on a Dragon, this blossoming of your own self-worth. You have carried this hatred within you since I first saw you. A solemn boy, such a small thing to be the cause of so much trouble. My Catalyst. But you knew even then that you had caused it, and while you stared back at the gossips without flinching, from that time on you took it all inside yourself."

I frowned at him, knowing that he was right, that I _had_ felt that way. The abdication of Chivalry had been a weight at my back since the age of five, but— "It was my fault," I said anyway, and wondered if the words sounded as hollow to the Fool as they did to me.

"You were a child," the Fool said. He spoke slowly, as if by doing so he could convince me. "No, do not deny it. You were a child. A Catalyst, yes, but that is not something that you did. It is something that you _are_. Nothing that you could have done or can ever do will change that." He winked suddenly, and raised an eyebrow, and for a moment I glimpsed the madcap jester of my youth. "Besides, if there is fault to be apportioned, it was Chivalry who did the deed." His accompanying gesture was more suitable to the guardroom, but I ignored it. Then he tilted his head at me. "But you don't need me to tell you this anymore, do you?"

I turned my eyes away, at the ground, the light outside. When I looked back at him, he was still watching me, still waiting for an answer. "No," I said finally, the word ground out of me like stone in my throat. Then, "No," a second time, and this time it came easier, like my mind was finally realising what my heart already knew.

His face cleared, and his eyes lit as they had not when I arrived. "You could not have said that some days ago. What you have from Girl on a Dragon I do not know, but it was more than I had realised. I have never known the man that you are now. Perhaps this is the man you were always meant to be. It is good to see you finally, Beloved."

I wanted to tell him, but I could not speak the words. There would be time enough, I knew. He was nearly healed, but would not be well enough to enter the Skill-stones again for a time yet. I would travel back to Buckkeep to serve my Queen, and then I would return to see the Fool before he left. There was time yet to speak of this, to tell him that this was not meant to be farewell.

So I turned from him and left him to sleep and made my way out to the Maze, where Prilkop was bringing back stockpiles of food from the abandoned storerooms, and where the library of stolen scrolls lay.

So it was that I betrayed the Fool for a second time. I did not tell him what I had from him. Had I stolen it or had he given it to me? Or perhaps he had given it to Girl on a Dragon those many years before, and had forgotten. Was he less without it? I could not tell, was no longer conscious of the touch of his mind since the moment he had stripped me of our Skill-bond. Looking back, I was never sure if it was a fair deal. He had given me back my life, but doomed me with his love.

He did not know that I had this piece of him.

Then another thought occurred to me. Now that I had this of him, what did he have left? Had I taken it only to leave emptiness in it's place? Had I Forged his love for me from him?

I peeled off my gloves and pressed my hand to the inside of my wrist, but it was just bare skin, devoid of the silvered fingerprints that had marked it these past sixteen years.

Abruptly, the absence of our Skill-bond tore at me. I had not realised how much I relied on the connection, the touch of him always at a fingertip. It had only become stronger since his death, since the day we had merged and been one.

I wanted to make my way back out from the Elderling Maze to the Black Man's cave. To where the Fool slept. Convince him to stay, perhaps. Go with him, if he would not stay. To tell him the truth. But even as I turned away from the Skill-pillar, I felt Thick's skill nudging at me. _Are you coming yet? The Queen wants you._

I could wait. It would not be for long. I nodded at Prilkop, catching the edge in his anxious _Wait!_ and _Rest!_ but I did not heed him. Rather, when I stepped though the pillar and fell into the dark, I concentrated on the moment I would be back here again. With my Beloved. FitzChivalry.

 


End file.
